Good news Americans and Canadians! The next publisher to leap upon the Steam train is Ubisoft, with over forty of their games onto Valve’s download platform. This includes classics like Far Cry, various Clancy titles, the Heroes of Might & Magic series, and IL-2 Sturmovik. And it also means future Ubi releases will be downloadable too, with pre-loading Assassin’s Creed already an option. You know, if you’re from North America.

This is the second company in a row to sign up with Steam and prevent the majority of the world from being able to take advantage. Atari’s motives last month are clear: they are currently so very overwhelmed with money that the last thing they want is vast numbers of people buying their games. But Ubisoft too? I asked Valve’s Doug Lombardi why this was the case, who put his hands up and said,

“It’s their call. We offer worldwide coverage, and we’re happy to offer the products to as many customers as the publisher/developer desires.”

We’ll be asking Atari and Ubi what their reasons are, and you can be sure we’ll get back to you as soon as we know. Meanwhile, have fun North Americans.

What? No fair! Got all excited for nothing in the end – I hope this doesn’t become a trend and I’d like to know why very much. It’s bad enough that some publishers are selling their games at inflated prices (for no good reason than to make it less attractive than buying retail). Damn those suits.

So far all that’s actually on there are Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Splinter Cell, and Far Cry. I can only get as excited as these being cheap allow… okay, probably just my taste, as I can’t handle too many shooters a year.

I hope that IL-2 actually gets on there, and maybe Heroes of M&M. I don’t see them under Ubisoft, not yet anyway.

I suppose this decision makes sense to the bean counters, and they’re the ones that call the shots. I imagine the dev -to- suit relationship as a one-act play with a spousal abuse theme(“Bitch, you’re no good with money, I’m going to alienate Europe because I know what’s best. Now get back in the kitchen!” “Okay.” *downtrodden musical sequence*).

Anywho, their offerings really have no hook. Splinter Cell and Far Cry for cheap, that’s it for titles available now, and if they’re your type of game you probably still have the CDs around. Assassin’s Creed isn’t what I’d call hypeworthy at this point so I’m certainly not putting down for a preorder.

The best case scenario is they’re just waiting until they have actually compelling offerings, perhaps dipping into a more diverse section of their catalog, at which point they’ll make them available globally. I’m a cynic so I’m calling that very unlikely.

I’m frankly furious about this, and resisting launching into my pre-prepared rant about it, which encompases the completely arbitrary country-based restrictions placed upon such things as TV shows on iTunes, audio books on Audible and music from Amazon’s MP3 store. It drives me bonkers, because it’s a completely arbitrary decision in a modern, networked world. There is NO reson for something like this other than some suit decided, for whatever arcane reason, to flip a switch and make it be so. Well to hell with them. They’ve lost more than one sale from me because of this nonsense.

Er, I said in my earlier post they only had Far Cry and Splinter Cell, I searched through the Steam catalog as best I could but those are the only UbiSoft games I could find. It took some additional searching to find the others, but I should’ve read more closely in the first place.

I needn’t have worried and perhaps the non-North Americans may have reason to be jealous: The “local” Steam news says “The Ubisoft line-up on Steam will be the largest library of titles available from any single publisher or developer.” Their website’s roster also includes, to mention ones I’d pay $20-30 to check out: Silent Hunter, Beyond Good & Evil, XIII, Rainbow Six. No irresistible hook but not bad.

As far as TV Shows/Music download services go, the restrictions are because distrubutors need to negotiate with each country’s equivalent of the RIAA/MPAA individually for licensing rights. I have no idea if the same is true for games.

That’s why Canada got cut off from Pandora.com, and why deezer.com’s free-to-everyone (legitimate) music streaming is so unheard of.

FarCry for $9? Absolutlely. I’ve been, ahem, enjoying it for some time now, even starting it up again recently on my new monster of a PC, so the timing of this couldn’t be better. Hell, I’m tempted to grab Beyond Good & Evil if/when they do throw it up there, even though I’ve already got it for the PS2. Maybe that Assassin’s Creed thing too…

EDIT: RPS site mechanics, things are all sorts of borked with the site’s layout in Safari, presumably due to bad ad code in the topmost banner.

Thanks RPS for someone finally highlighting this ridiculous issue. I reckon there is about 5 games I’d buy if they a) offered them here, b) at the original USD price (so no more Call of Duty 4 BULLSHIT of charging one price for the US and more than double for Aussies and others).

Valve really need to sort this out and speak with these publishers, it is having a VERY destructive effect on their reputation and and public opinion.

We have money and we’d very much like to give them, why don’t they want it?

On steam last I checked you can buy MTW2 Kingdoms, but not the original game (if you live where I live – I just came out of hibernation). Might have changed by now (again – hibernation), but when I tried a while ago this held true, and when I inquired of steam CS, the answer was “meh” or words to that effect. And yes, you had to have the steam version of MTW2 to play the Steam edition of Kingdoms.

This shit is getting out of hand in my opinion. It’s getting so that in the northernmost capital of the world, we can’t benefit from being the most networked country in the world as far as downloadable content goes. An example is iTunes, on whose list we don’t even register. As far as they’re concerned, I live in Surrey…

That ad-supported version of Far Cry is also only available in the States. There’s something of a theme developing here.

@ Doug F:

Yeah, I know, I’m aware of the legal wranglings of it all, but my point is that that sort of BS shouldn’t be necessary in this modern age. Media distribution companies (and Valve is now one too) need to be making more of an effort to push forward into this new world. If they’re not going to make something available to the globe, they shouldn’t put it on a global network. My money’s just as good as American money (better, possibly, given the way their economy might be going), but they’re denying me the opportunity to *give* my money to them.

Give me access to these games and I’ll buy ‘em. Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed… I’m a big Steam fan, I love it. But between THQ, Atari and now Ubisoft, I’m starting to get scared of a trend developing. Yeah, it’s their loss, and yeah, I can go find boxed copies instead, but having them on Steam makes me far more likely to buy them. Activision lost a CoD4 sale by jacking up the local Steam price to be *more* expensive than an Australian retail copy, and despite the fact that I am going to go buy Assassin’s Creed regardless, Ubi have lost a bunch of sales of older games with this move. I’m just a drop in the ocean, sure, but I’m far from the only one.

See, I can’t believe that if companies were easily and legally able to sell the product in other countries that they would not do so. Why turn down money?

I suspect this comes down to a minefiled of localisation and legal issues, which, while probably not insurmountable, at the very least delay this sort of a release worldwide.

Indeed, given that there might well be expensive legal work involved, a sort-of “pilot scheme” in North America to see whether putting said work in would actually be profitable seems eminently sensible.

In fact, here’s an idea for the RPS quadrumivarate: why not do a full article on this topic? Try and get those interviews from people from Ubisoft and Atari, shed some light on why it is that games often take so long to cross the pond, and how it all fits in with digital distribution? I’d read it.

I can guess what’s the reason for that. Take Assassins Creed as an example:
The game costs 45$ at amazon.com and 45€ at amazon.de
which is 70$. They would just get less money. They would die if we european people wouldn’t pay 50% more for our games than the americians…

Its kind of funny and sad in a way, the reason the $ is falling is because certain groups of bean counters screwed up in the states… Now we have a completely different group of bean counter who, by the sounds of it, are inadvertantly encouraging this problem.

Whats worst, as someone rightly pointed out, “Assassin’s Creed released on Steam in North America, and on torrents in Europe ” – Congratulations gentlemen, you’ve just given the petty little children another justification for not paying for your game. Its a little thing called creed, err, I meant greed.

Well I just got a Steam update that says “Updated game overlay to support Assassin’s Creed” but can’t find any mention of Ubisoft anywhere. I’m speechless at the bureaucracy. I honestly don’t understand the reasoning.

Every time a company discriminates against Europe, they get added to my “torrent only” list. I was frothing at the mouth to get my hands on Soulstorm, but after all the arsing around that happened (not to mention the vastly inflated price) I decided to “source it from an alternative digital distribution platform”

I get annoyed that steam notifies me of these new games then hides them from me when I log in. They should let me see their pages and have a big note saying “sorry this title isn’t available outside the united states”. At least then I’d know why. Plus if the companies are going to be so stupid about it they deserve the bad rep. I was so angry when 2k released the GTA’s, but excluded Australia.

That COD4 thing is the worst though. I’ve now a policy of boycotting all games that have inflated download prices in my region. It’s not going to make me buy it retail, I just wont buy it at all.

I’m guessing from STEAM’s perspective it’s important to get other publishers with their foot in the door, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether they come inside to sit on the sofa and have a cup of tea – not yet anyway.

…but they need to start thinking about putting pressure on those profiting from it. Getting a wide ranging catalogue of products to sell is great, but it’s time to start setting sensible rules that benefit customers, not punish them.

Do people here really believe that incompetence and “discrimination” are the only imaginable factors keeping companies, entities structured entirely around the concept of maximising profit, from doing something profitable?

There are surely hidden factors here, whether legal or otherwise, which we’re not seeing (and I eagerly wait a description of exactly what those are). But this OMG DISCRIMINATION stuff is just embarrassing.

Instead they’ll buy it from online retailers for £5 less than most shops in the UK. (at least, imagining those that buy through steam are usually savvy/fear the outside enough to internet shop in general)

(edit)

Actually there has to be something wrong when it’s fairly consistent that the cheapest places I have seen to buy games offline are Woolworths and Asda and not a specialist shop like GAME which frequently has £4 or £5 higher on a pricetag, if not just £1 or £2.

Just quietly…. am I the only one who likes my boxes? I like the way they stack. I like how buying a new game is like getting a nice present you get to open and play around with. An expensive present. That I bought myself. Anyways.

Oh well. The guys at my local EB are all pretty cool. I get enough favours there that even if I’m paying a few dollars more, I’m getting something extra for it :/

Actually there has to be something wrong when it’s fairly consistent that the cheapest places I have seen to buy games offline are Woolworths and Asda and not a specialist shop like GAME which frequently has £4 or £5 higher on a pricetag, if not just £1 or £2.

Think of it like buying a car… You can buy it direct from the dealer (the ‘recognised’ car sellers) but you’ll get it cheaper if you go to Motorpoint or one of those other car supermarkets OR buy used from a garage.

Brands such as GAME leverage their position as a recognised highstreet brand to sell above the average selling price because joe public always used to think that it was the only place to shop. This has changed with the internet and supermarkets eating into profits and companies have had to move with the times – some slower than others.

Take HMV as an example – they’ve finally started bringing their store prices inline with their web prices (albeit there are still discrepancies, such as my local HMV selling 3-4 year old games for £30, but that’s a per-store thing).